Search This Blog

NYC Holiday Concert: Against the Law?

Stage manager Dylan Morris '11 reflects on the Glee Club's holiday concert in New York City and explains how the YGC almost sang itself afoul of the law.

The first Friday in December is always a day of celebration at Yale. Fall term classes end that afternoon. Exams and papers remain, but with the seeming eternity of reading week stretched out before us, we students feel as if we can ignore them (a week later, we feel differently).

The Glee Club has its own traditional way of celebrating this campus holiday. We board the Metro-North train and head down to New York City for our yearly Holiday Concert at the Yale Club of New York. When announcing the trip at rehearsal, our manager Rachel Wilf told us that the Yale Club is her favorite yearly YGC concert. Or, as YGC president Emily Howell put it in her ad-libbed solo during “Eli Yale”: “Out of all our fall concerts, the Yale Club is always a winner / And that’s not just because we all like free dinner.”

We are indeed treated to a tasty meal before we sing, but Emily is right; there’s plenty to like about the concert besides the grub. We couldn’t ask for a friendlier audience than a crowd of Yale alums and New York-area YGC family members, and the approaching winter holidays give us an excuse to add traditional Christmas carols like “Es ist ein rose entsprungen” and the “Glouscestershire Wassail” to our repertoire.

Yet what Glee Clubbers most eagerly anticipate each year is the night’s secondconcert. We head back from the Yale Club to Grand Central Station to catch the Metro-North. Before we board, we assemble on the double-stairway at the west end of Vanderbilt Hall, the station’s largest atrium. There, our director, Jeff, conducts us as we sing a semi-spontaneous mix of carols and concert repertoire.

There’s a bit of an ImprovEverywhere or flashmob aspect to the Grand Central concert. A number of people know about the tradition (in 2008, Time Out New York featured it as a “must see for the holiday season”), but most of the crowd that gathers to listen is made up of travelers who take a break during their Friday commute to listen to the choir that has mysteriously appeared in their train station. We’ve learned to watch for looks of surprise-turning-into-pleasure on passing commuters’ faces.

This year, though, the concert was not all smiles. As we were starting our second carol, “Silent Night,” a pair of uniformed New York City Policemen walked purposefully out toward Jeff, who stopped conducting and began to talk to them. We could not hear the conversation, but the officers’ expressions said enough.

Then the crowd stood up to The Law on our behalf. “They do this every year!” one bystander shouted. “They’re singing about peace!” an indignant listener told the gun-toting cops.

As for the Glee Club, we turned and looked expectantly at our assistant conductor, Max Blum. He rose to the occasion, giving us the first pitch and the downbeat of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.” We began again; the crowd began to cheer. The officers, who knew how to recognize a lost cause when they saw one, begrudgingly broke off their dispute with Jeff. Missing neither a literal nor a figurative beat, he turned back to us and conducted the end of the carol.

We sang the rest of the concert without incident, boarded the MetroNorth, and sang our way home to New Haven. On the ride, I kept thinking back to the supportive Grand Central audience and smiling.

Popular posts from this blog

An article from Donna Doherty in today's New Haven Register. All photos Arnold Gold/New Haven Register... and a video in the original article here.

NEW HAVEN — It has sung all over the world, survived wars and co-education. Its alums include legendary songwriter Cole Porter, former senators Prescott Bush and James Symington, and peace activist Rev. William Sloane Coffin, so reaching 150 years old seemed cause for celebration.

The Yale Glee Club, the oldest musical organization on campus, has big plans for that occasion, ones which embrace the community and continue through May, including two specially commissioned works, each composer and writer, unbeknownst to the other, choosing to honor the city of New Haven.

“City Song,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and former Yale Glee-er Lew Spratlan and renowned Yale poet Elizabeth Alexander, will have its world premiere at a gala free concert at 5 p.m. Saturday at Woolsey Hall, featuring current Glee Club members and five decades of…

Just in case you were wondering what Glee Club members do during dead week, here is just a glimpse of the festivities! This occurred during a lovely spring afternoon after a bit too much happy frappuccino hour at Starbucks.

Bram Wayman '09 delves into the depths of songbooks past. The views shared here in no way represent the official opinion of the YGC Blog nor the YGC... & c. & c. & c.*

Though clear favorites stand the test of time, and the old song books of Yale are full of the high stupidity of yesteryear, a few gems that aren't often — if ever — sung today stand out for me. Some of these songs are beautiful, some hilarious, and some downright offensive, but they all deserve a second look, and I'm not convinced all of them should have fallen out of use. I'm no expert on the history of Yale songs, and have only picked from a few books, but here are ten songs of Yale that still bring a smile to my face.

1. "Old Tom Wilson." TTBB. One of Barty's cleverest arrangements, this piece is a song from the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky. It features vocal banjos, vocal beer-chugging that gets longer each time the jug goes around, lyrics such as "Big fat gals…

While I thoroughly enjoyed the Bernstein, I decided to make this blog post an extended version of the pep talk I gave before our concert on Friday, in which I talked about Vaughan Williams. Enjoy!

––––

I first encountered this piece when I was 16, as part of a northern
Virginia choral association concert. They mailed me the score (which I still
have) and gave me a few weeks to learn it before having two rehearsals and then
a concert. I still remember trying to learn the music note by note (since I
couldn’t sight read back then) listen to a midi file of the soprano I part on
repeat. So this is how I encountered Vaughan Williams--a piano midi file. My
first impression, especially once I got to “Beat! Beat! Drums!” was….what the
heck is this music. I didn’t really understand the poetry, or the war, or any
of the context surrounding this piece. All I knew was there was something about
a solemn church and a bridegroom and bugles, and something about snorting horses
in Dan…the piece was a mys…